What's Your Name?
by The Smiling Shadow
Summary: In the outskirts of MegaCity, in the little broken up towns with small houses made of anything that can be found. In a little playground a little girl sees a man that does not belong. A man in a suit, who seems to not remember anything.


Far beyond the reaches of a city are the barren lands of small homes and the people that live in them that could never afford anything bigger. Homes infected with broken glass and weeds sprouting from the ground. Broken concrete makes potholes for the few with cars to feel fear driving home. Homeless people make a home of the empty alleyways near the trash bins where they are able to make beds. Broken fences that are hardly ever respected surround people and places. Graffiti covers almost all the walls, troubled people's way of sending out a message to the rest of the world. Broken and rusted playgrounds are where the children play and laugh, and not even seem to notice the hell of their lives. Such a horrible place for such small and innocent minds that deserve so much more than what they've been given.

It is here a little Spanish girl calls home. She's beautiful in her lovely dress from a cheap market. A white little dress, decorated with yellow daisies. Her mother has folded her hair in a special bun because she wanted to look pretty today. She even put on some pretty little white slippers to go with her dress. She laughs and plays with the other children of her home. Her hands are hurt from the rust on the metal monkey bars, but she doesn't car.

She doesn't have a care in the world being not a day older than six.

She is queen of the playground as she wins the race to the top of the monkey bars, she sits in high triumph, able to see the entire playground and even her little red house and the homeless man that they often feed. She smiles at it as children often to at their homes. But as she scans her newly made kingdom she sees someone she has never seen before. The sun shines brightly with its rays showing it is springtime. It won't be raining for a very long time. That's good. She doesn't like it when it rains, sometimes it rains so hard, it sounds like the metal roof over her house is going to fall.

"Hey, my turn, my turn!" Yells a boy name Roberto. "Get down! It's my turn!"

Not now, she wants to say, she is queen. But she is fixated on this person she has never seen before. A man. A man that does not belong there.

Before she can notice Roberto is tugging at her new white dress. She tells him to stop and skillfully jumps from her throne and back down to the Earth. She walks in a huff, leaving the playground and heading towards the man she saw.

She must begin walking up hill. The man is sitting in the field they like to call Greenland. The field has no grass, just extremely tall weeds with little Mustard plants that happen to be little yellow flowers. The little girl happens to call them Daisies even though she knows they're not. Farther up the hill is some rusted junk someone left there a long time ago, and an old tree they like to climb. The man seems to have a vacant sign in his head, for he just sits in Greenland, staring down at the little homes under the hill. He face is a void, or perhaps an expression that the little girl has never seen before.

The Man does not even notice her when she finally makes it to him, her long journey up a hill over. She waits for the man to look at her but he does not. She frowns at his silence, and looks at him. What a strange man she thought, he does not belong here.

No, she could tell that much from him. He did not belong there. A man in a suit must be important, and have lots of money. A man in a suit would never come here.

But the man still sits there as if in his own little world at the time. She studies him further, with curious eyes she sees him holding a pair of sunglasses. She looks back up at the man, his blue eyes still staring at nothing, and she wonders why he is not wearing them. Slowly the child takes a step closer to him, and reaches down for his sunglasses, wanting to tell him that he should put them on. Slowly she gently touches the sunglasses with her small child hands, but even the slight force causes the man to lose grip of them, and they fall to hard ground where they land on a rock and crack ever so slightly.

The little girl gasps at the cracking noise she has caused, and she stares at fear at the man. Expecting him to yell at her like her Abuleto does whenever she breaks something. She cringes and prepares to apologize again and again in English, expecting that the man wouldn't know Spanish. But instead the man does nothing for a moment. The only thing he did do was his mouth slightly opened, and he weakly moved his head over to look at the sunglasses that now lay on a little rock that some would have called a pebble. The little girl frowns and wonders what he's going to do. But for just some moments the man stares at the sunglasses, and does nothing else.

Then finally he reaches for them, and as if he were just learning he had hands, picked them up slowly. He brought them closer to his blue eyes, his mouth still slightly open, and he tilted his head at them as if they were something foreign. He finally sees the little crack, and wonders what had happened to them. He stares at them as if he had never seen them before, and before he could ever see them they were broken. But then he realizes he could still study them even if they were broken. He pulls them closer for a moment, looking at the little crack.

"I'm sorry!" The little girl says.

The man slowly looks up over to her. He seems to stare at her as if she were as strange and alien as the sunglasses, as if he had never seen a little girl before, as if he had never even noticed her all this time.

"I'm so sorry, sir!" The little girl knows sir is respectful; her mama always calls her grocery manger sir. "I'm sorry! I didn't mean to break them, I didn't! I just thought you'd be more comfortable wearing them!"

The man tilts his head at her, closing his mouth and looking up at her. He says nothing and merely stares at her.

"Um…." The girl frowns.

And the man still stares.

"My name is Lucilla, it means light, but my friends call me Lucy, it's more American." The girl named Lucilla says in her Spanish accent.

The man nods slowly.

"What's your name?" Lucy asks.

She is kind and courtesy, folding her hands together as she does when she is nervous.

The man seems to be confused by her questions. He has a worried look on his vacant face, and slowly turns his head back to the sunglasses, asking them if they know what his name is. The sunglasses don't answer him, so he frowns and thinks. He doesn't know his name, or if he ever had one. He wondered if it was normal to have a name, and wondered which name he should choose to have if he found he didn't have one. But then he realized he didn't know any other names besides the girl that had just told him hers.

And the Lucy sees this.

"You don't know do you?" She asks.

The man shakes his head.

Slowly Lucy sits next to the man, and pats him on the back as her brother do with her.

"Do you know how you got here?"

The man looks around confused, he is seeing the world all over again. For the first time with new eyes he looks around, he didn't even notice what had been surrounding him until now.

"I guess that's a no, then." Lucy says.

The little girl wonders what to do. The man still looks around. Finally Lucy stands up and gets in front of the man.

"You don't belong here." She tells him. "You must have a home over there, in the city." She points towards the horizon where a Mega city is. "You must be important because of your suit. You must have a life."

The man peeks over her, leaning to his right to see the city again.

"You must remember something?"

The man then returns to looking around, and finally notices the tree.

The queen of the playground frowns at the man. There must be something…anything in that mind, a memory, a mama, or a papa. Big brothers or little sisters. Anyone at all would do….

"I remember…" The man begins.

Lucy gasps at his voice, she did not expect him to answer. Though he is almost silent, he speaks barely above a whisper, and his voice is cracked and hoarse, he struggles to find words again. It has been a long time since he has spoken.

"I remember Neo." He says.

"Neo?"

Lucy yells the name with delight. What a silly name she thinks, a silly name, but a name still. Overjoyed that the man in a suit remember anything at all she smiles and laughs.

"Neo!" She screams again. "Well, who is he?"

"I don't remember."

"Oh…."

Lucy frowns again.

The little girl grabs the man's hand, and tugs on it.

"Come on." She urges. "Come on. This way."

The man is slowly as he stands up, not sure if he would be able to. He stares down at his feet for a moment before moving one forward…then the next…then the next… The girl pulls at his hand, leading the way for him. Lucy in her little white dress, pulling at a man in a suit.

Faster Lucy tugs at the man, into the little houses with all their flaws. Past her neighbors and their wondering and curious eyes at the man that does not belong there.

The man stares back at the people, wondering what they are staring at. But then is blinded by the amazement of the houses, and the world around him. He wants to touch it, if not Lucy were keeping his hand for herself.

The little girl stops in front of a red little house.

"Wait here." She points to the ground. "Mama, Papa!" She yells as she runs into the house.

The man tilts his head as she runs off, and continues to look down at the ground where she had pointed him to stay. He cautiously steps on the spot, and wonders what is so special about it that he must stay on it. It looks like the rest of the ground so he decides to leave it. The man grips his cracked sunglasses in his hands, and heads towards the side of the red house. Gently he slides his hand down it, feeling the texture and everything. But then his foot bumps into something.

"Hey buddy watch it. Some of us are trying to sleep here." Scuffed a man on the ground, covered in a trash bag for a blanket.

The man tilts his head.

"I am sorry." Says the man.

The man in the suit took a step back from the man, but then felt a water drop on the top of his head. He looked up, and another drop fell onto his forehead. He took a step back and put his hand out and felt two drops fall.

"Rain…" Said the man, and he smiled. "Rain…."

"Yeah, buddy. It rained real hard a few days ago, still wet from it all. Rain, who needs it? Not me. Gets me wet." Said the homeless man.

"Rain…."

Rain. It rang a memory in the man's mind. Rain. Rain is beautiful, he though. Rain is amazing and welcoming. Rain is so…familiar.

"Rain." The man smiled.

"See Mama! See Papa!" Lucy ran from her house. "See, he doesn't remember! Honest! He doesn't!"

Lucy runs towards the man, and gently grabs his hand. Her mother came out after her, yelling at her in Spanish. Her father was last, coming out and staring shocked at the man in the suit. Even as Lucy tugged on him, his eyes were fixated on the drops of water falling from the little house's rooftop.

"I remember…." The man said to Lucy.

"You do?" Lucy jumped in excitement.

"Your daughter is very gifted, sir." Said the man to her father. "Very courtesy and sweet. But I must go now."

The man looked down at the little girl.

"Will you show me the way to the city?" He asked.

And Lucy nod.

She once again tugged at his hand, pulling him along the broken and busted road. Tugging him along, leading the way, queen of her home she knew the way to the city. Little beautiful Lucy.

Together she led them to the very end of their homes. Where the little houses stopped, and the broken road wasn't broken anymore. Where the city could be clearly seen, and the path to it was simple. There, Lucy jumped up and down, still holding the man's hand. He stared at her again, in his curious and vacant way, as he tugged his sunglasses in his jacket pocket.

"There it is, just follow the road!" She laughed.

"Thank you." He said.

"What do you remember?"

"Not much. I have to find someone in the city. She can help me."

"I hope you find her."

And before the man was able to leave, Lucy tugged on his hand one last time.

"My name is Lucy, what's yours?" She asked.

The man bent close to the little girl and whispered in her ear what he remembered to be his name. She smiled and laughed.

"Goodbye." He said.

"Bye, bye!" She waved.

And he was off, walking silently towards a towering city, searching for a Oracle that would be able to tell him all he would ever need to know.

Lucy laughed and watched him leave, she giggled, what a silly name she thought. And then she started for her way home. What a silly, silly name.

And his name was Smith.

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This was supposed to be shorter, so I could add it to another story, but it just grew into this. I hope you enjoy.


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